A scary fairy tale, or what the real stories of the Brothers Grimm were like. What were the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm like in the original source?

Once upon a time, our parents read these fascinating fairy tales to us at night, then we read these same stories to our children and, probably, our children will read them to their kids.

Is there at least one person who has never heard the romantic story about the gentle, kind beauty Snow White and Prince Charming, about the brave and resourceful children Hansel and Gretta, or about the long-haired beauty Rapunzel, imprisoned in the highest tower of the castle? Most likely, there are no such people, and if there are, then there are not so many of them. The authors of these fairy tales, beloved by children and adults, which have been heard daily in thousands of children's bedrooms for almost two hundred years, are the Brothers Grimm. Back at the very beginning of the nineteenth century, the Brothers Grimm, linguists and explorers German culture, began to collect and record German folk tales. But, as it turned out, the fairy tales we were familiar with, written down by the Brothers Grimm, were not always so kind and romantic. Modern man who reads the original fairy tales of these writers will most likely be horrified by the incredibly cruel and bloody plots, and the question is whether mom or dad will want to read these scary stories to their baby before bed.

Now there are different opinions as to whether it is worth remembering what the original stories told by the Brothers Grimm were like in the first edition. But, for example, the editor of the publication, which for the first time after two centuries of oblivion published the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm in their original version without cuts, says that the time has come for parents and publishers to return to the originals of these fairy tales.

Rapunzel was impregnated by her prince, the wicked queen in Snow White was actually the biological mother of a beautiful princess who plotted to kill her own child, and yet another story's hungry mother became so mad and desperate that she told her daughters, “I must kill you. because I need to eat something.” These versions of the tales have never before been published in English or any other language (except German), but the first edition of the book "Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm" contains versions of the stories that adults in Germany told their children before bed more than two hundred years ago. .

In December 1812, the brothers Grimm (Jacob and Wilhelm) published the first version of their fairy tales and soon became famous storytellers throughout the world. In 1815, the writers released the second volume of fairy tales, and over time, the brothers went even further and republished the book six times, polishing the stories and adding to them Christian motives to make these tales more suitable for children. Before the release of the seventh edition of fairy tales, the Brothers Grimm also removed numerous references to fairies. Today we all know exactly those versions of fairy tales that were contained in the seventh reprint, released already in 1857 - it became the most famous collection of fairy tales in the world.

Jack Zipes, professor emeritus of German and comparative literature at the University of Minnesota, says he has often wondered why the first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales had never been translated into English (or any other language) before. finally decided to do it myself. As Professor Zipes says, although modern editions of fairy tales contain about 100 stories that were included in the first edition, all these stories have been noticeably changed. Thus, the versions of the stories that are familiar to most readers today differ significantly from the stories that were told in the first edition.

Princeton University Press recently released the original version of the Brothers Grimm book, which consists of 156 stories in their original form. The edition, illustrated by the artist Andrea Dezso, shows a completely different side of well-known fairy tales, and also includes some terrible, completely unfamiliar fairy tales that the authors themselves once simply threw out of all subsequent editions reprinted by the Brothers Grimm.

For example, a scary story called "Children Played at Slaughtering" truly lives up to its title, as it is about a group of children playing at being a butcher and a pig. This terrible tale ends predictably: the boy cuts his younger brother's throat, and then he himself is stabbed in the heart by his enraged mother. Unfortunately, rushing to the children playing with a knife, the mother left another of her children in the bathtub, where he drowned. From the impossibility of living further, the mother hanged herself; when the husband returned home, he was so depressed that he also died soon after. The tale "Children of Famine" is equally creepy: a mother threatens to kill her daughters because there is nothing else to eat. The children offer their mother their pieces of bread, but this cannot satisfy her hunger, and she says: “You must die, otherwise we will all wither.” The children suggest: “We will go to bed and sleep, not getting up until the Day of Judgment comes.” They did just that. “No one could wake them up from their sleep. Meanwhile, their mother left them, and no one knows where she went.”

If we think of Rapunzel, she gives herself up to her captor, and after spending a lot of “fun time” in the tower with her prince, she is surprised: “Tell me, Mother Gothel, why are my clothes becoming too tight? She doesn't suit me anymore." And the stepmother Snow White and the stepmother Hansel and Gretel in the original version of the fairy tales were their own mothers. Professor Zipes believes that in later editions the Brothers Grimm changed this because motherhood became sacred. So it was Snow White’s own mother who said to the huntsman, “Kill her and bring me her lungs and liver as proof of the deed done. After that, I will cook them with salt and eat them,” and Hansel and Gretel’s biological mother abandoned them in the forest.

Professor Zipes suggests that the changes that the Brothers Grimm later made to their fairy tales were "a reflection of a state of social behavior that had existed for many centuries and involved jealousy between a young stepmother and stepdaughter." The scientist notes: “In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many women died during childbirth, and there are numerous cases where the father remarried a younger woman who may have been close in age eldest daughter father."

In the original version of the fairy tale Cinderella, in order to achieve marriage with the prince, the stepsisters performed the extraordinary act of cutting off parts of their legs to fit the size of the golden slipper. But it was all to no avail - after all, the prince saw blood pouring out of his shoes. In Zipes's translation, the mother says to Cinderella's stepsister: “Here is the knife. If the shoe is still too tight for you, cut off a piece of your foot. This will hurt a little. But what difference could it make?

Zipes describes changes that were made to a "vast" number of stories, some forty or even fifty tales, because in the first edition they were too cruel, and by the seventh edition, the most famous throughout the world, all the horrors were either removed, or radically changed. “The first edition was not published for children or for family reading. These tales were not at all for children. Everything changed only when, after publishing the first two editions of fairy tales for adults, the Brothers Grimm changed their attitude towards these fairy tales and decided to create milder versions aimed at middle-class families. This led Wilhelm to edit and carefully censor many of the previously published tales.

As Professor Zipes notes, Wilhelm Grimm removed all stories that might offend middle-class religious sensibilities, such as a story about children playing at slaughtering cattle. Zipes also notes that Wilhelm "added many Christian expressions and proverbs," embellished the tales stylistically, and eliminated fairies because it linked many of the stories to French fairy tales. Zipes says: "Remember that this was during Napoleonic wars, during the period when the French occupied Germany." “So, in the fairy tale “Briar Rose,” better known as “Sleeping Beauty,” fairies turn into wise women. Moreover, it is the crab, and not the frog, who announces to the queen that she is pregnant.”

According to academics, the original stories are closer to the colloquial tradition and are also "more brash, fast-paced and colorful." Marina Warner in her opening remarks The Original Folk and Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm says that Professor Zipes "redrew the map we all thought we knew" and made the Brothers Grimm fairy tales "wonderfully strange again " Zipes writes that the originals "retain the sharp and naive taste of the colloquial tradition" and that the tales are "amazing stories precisely because they are so straightforward and unpretentious," with the Brothers Grimm adding to them their "sentimental Christian and Puritan ideology."

But according to Zipes, these stories still remain suitable fairy tales for the night. "It's time for parents and publishers to remember what the original stories told by the Brothers Grimm were like." Zipes adds, “Grimm's fairy tales have their natural origins in the people, and these tales can be accessible to both adults and children. If there is something disgusting, the reader can decide for himself whether he will read them. We don’t need puritanical censorship for someone to tell us what is good and what is bad for us.”

Of course, most likely, many would be interested in reading the original fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, which we still thought were beautiful and kind. But still, before you read to your child at night not that light pink-sky-blue story, but an older, scary, very scary fairy tale that makes the blood freeze in your veins, you should think carefully about where the baby will sleep later - in his bed or will move into bed with their parents for many years.

Based on materials from The Guardian

Pinocchio

In the original version by Carlo Collodi, published in 1883, there were no traces of fairies or miracles. At the very beginning of the book, the poor wooden boy fell asleep by the fire and his legs burned, and before that he managed to kill a talking cricket. Yes, yes, the same cute creature that we liked in cartoons. After all this, Pinocchio is turned into a donkey, tied to a stone and thrown off a cliff... but his misadventures do not end there. While he was a donkey, they bought him at a fair and wanted to make a drum out of him, then they almost put him in prison, and in general they mocked Pinocchio as best they could.

It is difficult to understand what the instructive part of the original fairy tale was. Don't plan boys out of wood, will it end badly? Be that as it may, the modern version with Karabas Barabas or the wooden boy's passionate desire to turn into a real one, sounds simply magical when you know the real story.

Snow White

In the original version of the fairy tale, the dwarves didn’t even pass by, but instead of a stepmother, Snow White had a real mother, who nevertheless sent a huntsman to kill her own daughter in the forest and bring back only her liver, lungs and heart to salt and eat. According to some versions - for eternal beauty and youth. In the Brothers Grimm story from 1812, the cruel mother was finally punished: she came to Snow White's wedding and danced in hot iron shoes until she fell dead.

Little Red Riding Hood

In the original story, on the basis of which Perrault created the legendary fairy tale (and this was already in 1697), the wolf was not the charming Johnny Depp, as in the new film, but a werewolf. Having eaten the grandmother, he invites Little Red Riding Hood not to discuss the size of his ears and eyes, but to immediately undress and go to bed, throwing his clothes into the fire. Further versions diverge - in Perrault's fairy tale, the wolf eats Little Red Riding Hood in bed; in the original story, the girl says that she wants to go to the toilet and manages to escape. Latest version sounds quite positive if we remember that in the Brothers Grimm version of 1812, the girl and grandmother are freed by cutting the wolf's belly.

Cinderella

In the retelling of the Brothers Grimm, namely in the 7th edition in 1857, the tale sounds much more sinister than that of Charles Perrault, who created the original story 200 years ago. By the way, it is this creepy version that we see in the new film “Into the Woods...”. Why, of all the good retellings of the fairy tale, Hollywood chose this one is not clear, but the fact remains: according to the Brothers Grimm, the beautiful and evil sisters of Cinderella wanted to marry the prince at any cost and in desperation, one cut off her finger, and the other cut off her heel, so that her leg fit into the shoe. The pigeons, Cinderella's friends, notice that the shoes are filled with blood and, having discovered the sisters' deception, peck out their eyes. Well, at this time the prince understands that Cinderella is his only one.

sleeping Beauty

In the 1634 collection of fairy tales by the storyteller Giambattista Basile, who was one of the first to write down fairy tales that people told from generation to generation, and which were later rewritten by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault, the tale of the sleeping beauty also looks different. It is based on the short story “The Sun, the Moon and Talia (name)” by Giambattista Basile. Princess Thalia falls asleep deep sleep, and the prince finds her, but does not kiss her, but, enchanted by her beauty, rapes her. She gets pregnant and gives birth to twins. One of them begins to suck his finger instead of his chest in search of food and sucks out a fragment of an enchanted needle. The princess wakes up in shock, it turns out that she is already a mother. The king who raped her, having learned about the miraculous resurrection of the princess, quickly kills his former wife and remains with his new lover. This is how everything is simply resolved.

Pied Piper

The most famous version of the tale of the Pied Piper today, in a nutshell, is this:

The city of Hamelin was invaded by hordes of rats. And then a man with a pipe appeared and offered to rid the city of rodents. The inhabitants of Hamelin agreed to pay a generous reward, and the rat catcher fulfilled his part of the agreement. When it came to payment, the townspeople, as they say, “threw away” their savior. And then the Pied Piper decided to rid the city of children too!

In more modern versions, the Pied Piper lured the children to a cave away from the city and, once the greedy townspeople had paid, sent them all home. In the original, the Pied Piper led the children into the river, and they drowned (except for one limp, who lagged behind everyone).

Little Mermaid

Disney's film about the Little Mermaid ends with a magnificent wedding of Ariel and Eric, where not only people, but also sea inhabitants have fun. But in the first version, written by Hans Christian Andersen, the prince marries a completely different princess, and the grief-stricken Little Mermaid is offered a knife, which she must plunge into the prince’s heart to save herself. Instead, the poor child jumps into the sea and dies, turning into sea foam.

Then Andersen slightly softened the ending, and the Little Mermaid no longer became sea ​​foam, but a “daughter of the air” who is waiting for her turn to go to heaven. But it was still a very sad ending.

Initially, the little mermaid had to die so that the prince and his kingdom would prosper. This is such sacrifice. As a result, the little mermaid's soul becomes free for good deeds. I wonder what happens in the end to the prince’s soul. He certainly acted ignoblely.

Rapunzel

The Brothers Grimm pieced together a story from dark deeds, and it took a lot of work for Disney producers to remake it. In fact, the story of Rapunzel's escape ends with her jumping from a tower, attempting to commit suicide, but surviving. Then she goes blind and, now blind, looks for the prince. Whether it finds it or not is not said. Later, the prince finds Rapunzel, and she lives in the forest with two children. Whose it is also remains a mystery, apparently illegitimate, from the prince. Yeah, not exactly a children's legend.

beauty and the beast

What did you think? There is a catch here too. The Disney story is based on a French fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont. But this is where the similarities with the original story end. Zhanna wrote that Beauty was the youngest daughter, and she had two sisters. And then the fairy tale exactly repeats our Scarlet Flower. What a terrible thing. Actually, the beauty was sent to die without food or help in a deep forest. The sisters hoped that a terrible monster would devour her there.

Hansel and Gretel

Although the Brothers Grimm provided the fairy tale with a happy ending, the events that haunted the brother and sister can leave dark traces in the souls of children. Two parents left their children in the forest to die because they could not feed themselves (what a noble message instilled in children's minds). Once in the abode of the forest witch, the children barely escaped. The only thing that is supposedly true in the fairy tale is that the mother cuckoo dies a strange death at the end. Although, also here: what kind of inoculations of vengeful ideas are these?

Rumpelstiltskin

A tale about an evil dwarf who could spin gold from straw. In the original version of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale, he helps the miller's daughter, who lies to the king that she can spin gold from straw. The dwarf asks for a favor in return for her unborn child. When a child is born, and the girl does not agree to return it to the dwarf, he says that if she guesses his name, he will leave the child to her. The girl accidentally hears a song and says the name of the dwarf. In the latest version of the tale, the dwarf simply runs away in anger. But initially he falls under the floor, and, trying to get out, he pulls his leg and tears it into two pieces in front of the girl. A very life-affirming story.

The Princess and the Frog (The Frog King)

The fairy tale was also written by the Brothers Grimm. If in Russian fairy tales the princess turns out to be a frog, then he is the prince. And if in the later version of the fairy tale, refusing a kiss meant the eternal imprisonment of the young prince in the body of a frog, then in the earlier version, an incorrect spell that replaced the kiss flattened the unfortunate frog against the wall. Then the corpse of the frog lost its head and spontaneously combusted. Apparently animal rights were unheard of at the time the stories were written.

Masha and the Three Bears

This sweet tale features a little golden-haired girl who gets lost in the forest and ends up in a house three bears. The child eats their food, sits on their chairs, and falls asleep on the bear's bed. When the bears return, the girl wakes up and runs out of the window out of fear.

This tale (first published in 1837) has two originals. In the first, the bears find the girl, tear her apart and eat her. In the second, instead of Goldilocks, a little old woman appears, who, after the bears wake her up, jumps out the window and breaks either her leg or her neck.

A graduate of the library department of the University of Culture, Yulia first came to work at the youth library on the same day that an exhibition dedicated to the Brothers Grimm was being prepared.In the evening she was assigned to write a short text about the Brothers Grimm by the next day - it was supposed to be printed in large font and placed in the form of a sign at the very beginning of the viewing.

But at home Yulia did not find a single book where she could find the necessary information. Then Julia, not knowing, what to do, I opened a collection of fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm... and found a solution. Julia carefully examined the title page of the book, then turned the page. Here's what the back of the title page looked like:

Translation from German

G. Petnikova

Artist

M. Sorkin

Grimm Ya., Grimm V.K.

Fairy Tales / Brothers Grimm; (Translated from German by G. Petnikova; artist M. Sorkin). – Tashkent: Yulchudza, 1987. – 467 p.: ill.

4803020000 – 3

G ------------------- 45 – 87 I (German)

M 360 (04) – 87

Having carefully studied the back of the title, Julia was able to complete the task!

What do you think Julia wrote after looking at the back of the title page? Write.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Brothers Grimm are famous German storytellers who wrote a collection of folk tales. The Brothers Grimm were also famous philologists. The brothers' names were Jacob and Wilhelm. They published their collection in 1812, which soon became one of the favorite books of readers around the world.

B.G. - famous philologists. Their collection of German folk tales (1812) became one of the favorite books of readers around the world.

It seems to me that she wrote that this collection of folk tales has become one of the favorite books of readers around the world.

• Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are the most famous German philologists, as well as authors of favorite books by readers all over the world.

  Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Famous German philologists. In 1812, they published a collection of German folk tales, which became one of the favorite books of readers around the world.

  What were those two? German men. They were brothers. They lived in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They did not invent fairy tales, but used the folklore of the German people. Their tales were very popular.

Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, world-famous German writers, as well as learned philologists. They published German folk tales, thanks to them many readers became acquainted with German literature and became interested in it. For many, their fairy tales have become their favorite books.

Since she didn’t know what to write, she did the following: She wrote a little on her own and at the end: “A collection of German folk tales, published by the famous philologists brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in 1812, has become one of the favorite books of readers around the world , which is still read today.

One of the famous philologists were the German brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, who published a collection of German folk tales in 1812, which became one of the most beloved books of readers around the world.

Most likely, she wrote that the Brothers Grimm were German writers of fairy tales, and she also wrote what their names were and that they were folk tales, and also that their fairy tales later became favorite books all over the world.

Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm are famous philologists who created and published a collection of German folk tales in 1812. The brothers grew up in Germany and the collection of German fairy tales became one of the favorite books of readers not only in their home country, but throughout the world.

The famous German philologists, brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grim, are known throughout the world as authors and collectors of fairy tales. During their creative activity, they collected a huge number of folk tales, which fit on as many as 467 pages of our collection, and this, of course, is not all of their works. The images they collected also inspire artists and illustrators, who create wonderful drawings for them. And the fairy tales themselves have long been translated from German into many languages ​​of the world.

Grimm Ya., Grimm V.K.

Fairy Tales / Brothers Grimm; (Translated from German by G. Petnikova; artist M. Sorkin). – Tashkent: Yulchudza, 1987. – 467 p.: ill.

(exactly copied from the back of the title)

Exhibition of books by famous German philologists, brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Particularly popular are the collections of their German fairy tales, published in 1812, which have become one of the favorite books of readers around the world.

The 2 most common options: indirect and direct form. The ability of individual students to include information that is not on the surface (number of pages, illustrators, etc.). Error – collecting and authorship, folklore and literature are confused.

If you get confusedfolklore Andliterature , authorship Andgathering – I propose to deduct one point.

The Brothers Grimm sent it to their friend Clemens Brentano for review at his urgent personal request, but he did not return it. The manuscript was found only many years later, after the brothers’ death, in the Trappist monastery of Elenberg in Alsace. It is now known as the 1810 Elenberg Manuscript. It contains 49 tales, of which 15 were recorded by Wilhelm Grimm and 27 by Jacob Grimm. These tales were heard directly from the storytellers of Hesse. The rest are taken from literary sources.

There was a suspicion that Brentano would publish the tales first, under his own name, so it was decided to begin publishing his own book as soon as possible, with simple design and without illustrations, for reading by the common people.

On October 18, 1812 - "exactly one year before the Battle of Leipzig" (note by Jacob Grimm), Wilhelm Grimm wrote the preface to their first edition:

We consider it a blessing when it happens that a storm or other disaster sent by heaven knocks the entire crop to the ground, and somewhere near a low hedge or bush bordering the road, an untouched place will remain and individual spikelets will remain standing there as they stood. The gracious sun will shine again, and they will grow, lonely and unnoticed, no one’s hasty sickle will reap them to fill rich barns, but at the end of summer, when they fill up and ripen, poor, honest hands will find them and, carefully tying them, spikelet to spikelet , esteemed higher than whole sheaves, they will take them home, where they will serve as food for the whole winter, and perhaps they will provide the only seed for future sowing. We experience the same feelings when we look at the wealth of German poetry of bygone times and see that nothing living has survived from so much, even the memory of it has faded away, and only folk songs Yes, these naive home fairy tales. Places by the stove, by the kitchen fireplace, attic stairs, not yet forgotten holidays, meadows and forests with their silence, but, above all, serene fantasy - these are the hedges that preserved them and passed them on from one era to another.

Fragment of the "Preface"

The second edition in two volumes was published in 1819, the third part was published in 1822. In total, the second edition, which formed the basis for the first translations, contained 170 fairy tales, both volumes came out with title page by Ludwig Grimm, with an engraving of "Brother and Sister", as well as a portrait of Dorothea Fieman, one of the storytellers.

The influence of the book [ | ]

The influence of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tales was enormous; from the very first edition, these wonderful stories won the love of children's audiences. The popular Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden called this work one of the pillars Western culture.

The work of the Brothers Grimm influenced other folklore enthusiasts, inspiring them to collect fairy tales and awakening in them a spirit of romantic nationalism that emphasized local folk tales and neglected cross-cultural influences. This category of fairy tale collectors included: Alexander Nikolaevich Afanasyev, Norwegians Peter Kristen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Mu, an Englishman, and an American who collected Irish fairy tales. The response to these collections was not always positive. Joseph Jacobs once complained that English children do not read English fairy tales; in his own words, “What Perrault started, the Grimms finished.”

Fairy-tale characters have been subject to many different interpretations, including marginal ones, sometimes from the most unexpected angles. For example, the Nazis in Hitler's Germany considered Cinderella as a heroine belonging to a "pure race", the stepmother as a foreigner, and the prince as a Nazi hero with an uncorrupted instinct for recognizing races. Authors who subsequently wrote the truth about the horrors of the Holocaust included some of the tales in their memoirs, as in their book Briar Rose. After the Second World War, there were even some voices asking whether there was a connection between the cruel scenes in individual fairy tales and the atrocities of the Nazis (for example, Karl Privat published the article “Preparatory school for cruelty. Discussion of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.” in the Berlin “Der Tagesspiegel” dated 7 February 1947). However, the ban on printing a collection of fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm that allegedly existed before 1948 ( K.H.M.) in the British zone of occupation is just a legend.

List of fairy tales [ | ]

From the first edition. Volume 1 (1812)[ | ]

From the first edition. Volume 2 (1815)[ | ]

From the second edition (1819)[ | ]

From the third edition (1837)[ | ]

From the fourth edition (1840)[ | ]

From the fifth edition (1843)[ | ]

I knew that the history of popular children's stories is not entirely simple and is not always what it seems. But today I learned even more.

Once upon a time there lived a writer. His name was Achim von Arnim. One day he was reading a manuscript of his friends, as was later described, “pacing the room.” At the same time, von Arnim was so deep in reading that - as the apocrypha says - “he did not notice how a tame canary was balancing on his head, easily flapping its wings, which seemed to feel great in his thick curls.”

This scene has come down to us in the description of the Brothers Grimm. Jacob and Wilhelm (Jacob und Wilhelm Grimm) were the same friends of Achim von Arnim, whom he visited in the city of Kassel in 1812 and whose manuscript he read with such enthusiasm that he did not notice the canary on his head. The brothers Grimm, very prolific writers, treated Achim's opinion with great respect. Nevertheless, they were somewhat surprised when von Arnim preferred a collection of fairy tales to all the other manuscripts read that evening. Most of the exhibition space in the new Brothers Grimm Museum in Kassel is now devoted to these famous fairy tales, but they themselves did not consider these fairy tales their main business.

By Christmas 1812, they were published for the first time as a separate book, entitled: “Children's and Household (that is, family) Fairy Tales, Collected by the Brothers Grimm.” Sixteen original copies of this book with notes, comments and additions by the Brothers Grimm have been declared by UNESCO as the documentary heritage of humanity.

Romantic von Arnim, one of the collection's publishers folk songs, literally forced the once hesitant Jacob and Wilhelm to finally publish the tales that they had been collecting for many years. Millions of readers around the world, adults and children, have Achim von Arnim to thank for this. None of the books of the Brothers Grimm can even approximately compare in popularity with their fairy tales: neither a collection of German folk tales, nor explanatory dictionary German in 16 volumes.

But this is not surprising: in general, none of the books published in German have been translated so often into other languages ​​of the world (a total of 160 languages!), Not a single one has been published in such high circulations as the “fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm” - so They very soon began to be called in a variety of countries. When the first trade delegation from Japan arrived in Germany, which was just beginning to establish relations with Europe, Japanese diplomats and bankers demanded that a meeting with Jacob and Wilhelm be included in the visit program.

“The Town Musicians of Bremen”, “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats”, “The Brave Little Tailor”, “Tom Thumb”, “Sweet Porridge”, “Mistress Blizzard”, “King Thrushbeard” - these are just a few of the titles that are probably known almost every person in the world. Or they are known under other names and in slightly modified form. “Hansel and Gretel”, for example, as “Sister Alyonushka and brother Ivanushka”, “The Tale of the Fisherman and His Wife” - as “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish”, and so on.

Too rough or too smooth?

It is interesting that the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm had and even have today not only fans. In 1837, Jacob and Wilhelm, fighting off critics, wrote in an article that they were not going to analyze in detail the merits of their fairy tales in order to defend them. “The very fact of their national existence,” the Brothers Grimm emphasized, “is already sufficient to prove their value.” Meanwhile, the very first edition of the fairy tales caused discontent among such representatives of romanticism as Brentano. They considered fairy tales too crude and in need of literary treatment. It is curious that modern folklorists accuse the Brothers Grimm of the exact opposite - that they subjected oral folk tales to too strong a literary treatment.

The Brothers Grimm also have critics of a different kind. They tirelessly search for where they copied their fairy tales from and accuse them of plagiarism. Meanwhile, Jacob and Wilhelm never hid the fact that they did not compose their fairy tales themselves, but only recorded and processed what they heard from the storytellers. One of them was Dorothea Viehmann, the daughter of a Hessian innkeeper. Her Huguenot ancestors fled persecution from France, so many of the tales that Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm heard from Dorothea and are considered classic designs German folklore actually originates in French folklore (such as “Little Red Riding Hood” or “Puss in Boots”).

No fee

For some fairy tales, you can find not only oral, but also literary sources. For example, the Brave Tailor (“killing seven in one fell swoop”) first appeared in Martin Montanus’s schwanks back in the mid-16th century, and Rapunzel with her long golden hair was the heroine of one of Friedrich Schulz’s novels, published in 1790. But both authors were forgotten a long time ago, but the heroes of the Brothers Grimm became immortal. What made them immortal was the unique poetic language combined with realistic details, which is characteristic of the style of the Brothers Grimm.

By the way, for the first edition of the fairy tales, Jacob and Wilhelm did not receive a penny: they refused the fee so that the book, from which no one expected commercial success, could be published at all. And Achim von Arnim also had a hand in this, who managed to convince his friends that the value of the fairy tales they collected was much more important than the money that they could earn from these fairy tales. And he was right.

But recently in Great Britain they published the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm in the first edition of 1812 - that is, in the bloodiest and most terrible. I can tell you original stories that should not be told to children at night.

Cinderella

It is believed that the most early version"Cinderella" was invented in Ancient Egypt: While the beautiful prostitute Phodoris was bathing in the river, an eagle stole her sandal and took it to the pharaoh, who admired the small size of the shoes and ended up marrying the harlot.

The Italian Giambattista Basile, who recorded the collection of folk legends “Tale of Tales,” has it much worse. His Cinderella, or rather Zezolla, is not at all the unfortunate girl we know from Disney cartoons and children's plays. She didn’t want to endure humiliation from her stepmother, so she broke her stepmother’s neck with the lid of the chest, taking her nanny as an accomplice. The nanny immediately came to the rescue and became a second stepmother for the girl; in addition, she had six evil daughters; of course, the girl had no chance of killing them all. A chance saved the day: one day the king saw the girl and fell in love. Zezolla was quickly found by His Majesty's servants, but she managed to escape, dropping - no, not glass slipper! - a rough pianella with a cork sole, such as was worn by the women of Naples. The further scheme is clear: a nationwide search and a wedding. So the stepmother's killer became queen.

Actress Anna Levanova as Cinderella in the play “Cinderella” directed by Ekaterina Polovtseva at the Sovremennik Theater. Photo: RIA Novosti / Sergey Pyatakov

61 years after the Italian version, Charles Perrault released his tale. It was this that became the basis for all “vanilla” modern interpretations. True, in Perrault’s version, the girl is helped not by her godmother, but by her deceased mother: a white bird lives on her grave and grants wishes.

The Brothers Grimm also interpreted the plot of Cinderella in their own way: in their opinion, the poor orphan’s mischievous sisters should have gotten what they deserved. Trying to squeeze into the treasured shoe, one of the sisters cut off her toe, and the second cut off her heel. But the sacrifice was in vain - the prince was warned by the pigeons:

Look, look,
And the shoe is covered in blood...

These same flying warriors of justice eventually pecked out the sisters' eyes - and that's the end of the fairy tale.

Little Red Riding Hood

The story of a girl and a hungry wolf has been known in Europe since the 14th century. The contents of the basket varied depending on the location, but the story itself was much more unfortunate for Cinderella. Having killed the grandmother, the wolf not only eats her, but prepares a tasty treat from her body, and a certain drink from her blood. Hidden in bed, he watches as Little Red Riding Hood eagerly devolves her own grandmother. Grandma's cat tries to warn the girl, but she also dies terrible death(the wolf throws heavy wooden shoes at her). This apparently does not bother Little Red Riding Hood, and after a hearty dinner she obediently undresses and goes to bed, where the wolf is waiting for her. In most versions, this is where it all ends - they say, serves the stupid girl right!

Illustration in the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood”. Photo: Public Domain / Gustave Doré

Subsequently, Charles Perrault composed an optimistic ending for this story and added a moral for everyone whom strangers invite into their bed:

For small children, not without reason
(And especially for girls,
Beauties and pampered girls),
On the way, meeting all kinds of men,
You can’t listen to insidious speeches, -
Otherwise the wolf might eat them.
I said: wolf! There are countless wolves
But between them there are others
The rogues are so savvy
That, sweetly exuding flattery,
The maiden's honor is protected,
Accompany their walks home,
They are escorted bye-bye through dark corners...
But the wolf, alas, is more modest than it seems,
The more cunning and terrible he is!

Sleeping Beauty

The modern version of the kiss that woke up the beauty is just childish babble compared to the original story, which was recorded for posterity by the same Giambattista Basile. The beauty from his fairy tale, named Thalia, was also overtaken by a curse in the form of a spindle injection, after which the princess fell into a sound sleep. The inconsolable king-father left him in a small house in the forest, but could not imagine what would happen next. Years later, another king passed by, entered the house and saw Sleeping Beauty. Without thinking twice, he carried her to the bed and, so to speak, took advantage of the situation, and then left and forgot about everything for a long time. And the beauty, raped in a dream, nine months later gave birth to twins - a son named the Sun and a daughter named Moon. It was they who woke up Thalia: the boy, in search of his mother’s breast, began to suck her finger and accidentally sucked out a poisoned thorn. Further - more. The lustful king again came to the abandoned house and found offspring there.

Illustration from the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty”. Photo: Commons.wikimedia.org / AndreasPraefcke

He promised the girl mountains of gold and again left for his kingdom, where, by the way, she was waiting for him legal wife. The king's wife, having learned about the homewrecker, decided to exterminate her along with her entire brood and at the same time punish her unfaithful husband. She ordered the babies to be killed and made into meat pies for the king, and the princess to be burned. Just before the fire, the beauty’s screams were heard by the king, who came running and burned not her, but the annoying evil queen. And finally, the good news: the twins were not eaten, because the cook turned out to be a normal person and saved the kids by replacing them with lamb.

The defender of maiden honor, Charles Perrault, of course, greatly changed the fairy tale, but could not resist the “moral” at the end of the story. His parting words read:

Wait a little
So that my husband turns up,
Handsome and rich, too
Quite possible and understandable.
But a hundred long years,
Lying in bed, waiting
It's so unpleasant for ladies
That no one will be able to sleep...

Snow White

The brothers Grimm filled the fairy tale about Snow White with interesting details that seem wild in our humane times. The first version was published in 1812 and expanded in 1854. The beginning of the fairy tale does not bode well: “One snowy winter day, the queen sits and sews by a window with an ebony frame. By chance she pricks her finger with a needle, drops three drops of blood and thinks: “Oh, if only I had a baby, white as snow, red as blood and black as ebony.” But the truly creepy one here is the witch: she eats (as she thinks) the heart of the murdered Snow White, and then, realizing that she was mistaken, comes up with more and more sophisticated ways to kill her. These include a strangling dress string, a poisonous comb and a poisoned apple, which we know worked. The ending is also interesting: when everything goes well for Snow White, it’s the witch’s turn. As punishment for her sins, she dances in red-hot iron shoes until she falls dead.

Still from the cartoon "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."

Beauty and the Beast

The original source of the tale is no less than the ancient Greek myth about the beautiful Psyche, whose beauty was envied by everyone, from her older sisters to the goddess Aphrodite. The girl was chained to a rock in the hope of being fed to the monster, but she was miraculously saved by an “invisible creature.” It, of course, was male, because it made Psyche its wife on the condition that she would not torment him with questions. But, of course, female curiosity prevailed, and Psyche learned that her husband was not a monster at all, but a beautiful Cupid. Psyche's husband was offended and flew away, not promising to return. Meanwhile, Psyche's mother-in-law Aphrodite, who was against this marriage from the very beginning, decided to completely harass her daughter-in-law, forcing her to perform various difficult tasks: for example, bring the golden fleece from mad sheep and water from rivers of the dead Styx. But Psyche did everything, and there Cupid returned to the family, and they lived happily ever after. And the stupid, envious sisters rushed off the cliff, vainly hoping that the “invisible spirit” would be found on them too.

A version closer to modern history was written Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve in 1740. Everything about it is complicated: the Beast is essentially an unfortunate orphan. His father died, and his mother was forced to defend her kingdom from enemies, so she entrusted the upbringing of her son to someone else’s aunt. She turned out to be an evil witch, in addition, she wanted to seduce the boy, and having received a refusal, she turned him into a terrible beast. Beauty also has her own skeletons in her closet: she is not really her own, but adopted daughter merchant Her real father is the king who sinned with the stray good fairy. But an evil witch also lays claim to the king, so it was decided to give her rival’s daughter to the merchant, whose youngest daughter had just died. Well, a curious fact about Beauty’s sisters: when the beast lets her go to stay with her relatives, the “good” girls deliberately force her to stay in the hope that the monster will go wild and eat her. By the way, this subtle relatable moment is shown in the latest film version of “Beauty and the Beast” with Vincent Cassel